


Backwards Walk

by all_these_ghosts



Category: Daughter of Smoke and Bone - Laini Taylor
Genre: AU, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-21
Updated: 2014-04-28
Packaged: 2018-01-20 07:50:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1502540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/all_these_ghosts/pseuds/all_these_ghosts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was still dark when Karou woke up to warmth and the dim, flickering glow of wings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

When she awoke, nothing was the way it was supposed to be. Every morning for weeks, she'd woken up to firelight playing on red cave walls, the growls of chimaera in other caverns, the smell of cooking meat or piss or bad wine. The ground hard and rough against her shoulder blades, the air cold and getting colder.

This morning, when she woke up, she mostly just noticed that everything was soft. She was lying on a mattress - a real one, like the feather beds she'd stacked in her flat in Prague - with pillows cradling her head. The bed was covered in sheets and blankets and still more pillows, all soft and finely woven, in shades of red and gold. The light, at least, was similar: still firelight, though this time from candles and one flickering oil lamp in the corner of the room.

She was in a _room_. A real one, with a door and windows with heavy velvet coverings. With a sigh, she pulled herself upright to get a better look at her surroundings.

Wallpaper, a four-poster bed, a cushy armchair in the corner. And through the door in the corner - a bathroom. A real one. She was sure she could see a shower.

Stepping lightly on the tile floor, she padded around the room. She wasn't entirely confident she was really awake, but if this was a dream it was the nicest one she'd had in months, and she was in no hurry to wake up. She poured herself a glass of water from the sink - a working sink, a working faucet - and splashed her face until it felt almost clean.

From beyond the covered windows, she heard the call of the _muezzin_ , lilting and strange and comforting, at the same time. So she was back in the human world - funny, she didn't think of it as home anymore - probably in Morocco. But how?

The door to the hallway creaked open, and she jumped and spun into attack position. Her reflexes had gotten better and better the more people tried to murder her.

It was Akiva. He stood just inside the door, wings glamoured and face drawn.

It was _Akiva_.

"What's going on?" Karou demanded, dropping her hands but not her stance.

Akiva set down the bag he was carrying and stepped just inside the room, closing the door behind him. "I brought you something to eat," he said, ignoring her question. "And some tea."

"Where am I?"

"In Marrakech, back in your - the human world."

"Why?" Karou could feel her face getting hot, but she didn't care. Who did he think he was? What had he done to get her here?

He looked at her evenly. "You fainted," he said. "You and Zuzana were performing a resurrection, and you fainted. She tried to wake you up, but you wouldn't respond. Since she can't fly, she asked me to take you back here, to a real doctor. Chimaera battlefield medicine mostly involves letting people die and resurrecting them, but she didn't think that was ideal for the resurrectionist herself."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "So did you take me to a doctor, or just stash me away in a hotel?"

"It turns out that you're a bit of a celebrity," he said, nodding towards a crumpled piece of paper on the nightstand. Karou picked it up: it was the front page of a newspaper with her face on it. The headline: _Satan on Earth?_ Of course. "So I brought you here instead. If you still hadn't woken up in a few hours, I'd have taken you, but your friend thought that you needed a few hours of sleep and something to eat. It seems she was right."

"I sleep," Karou said, grumbling. "I eat."

Akiva arched an eyebrow. "Your friend told me she hadn't seen you eat in three days, and that every time she told you to eat, you said you were too busy."

"I am too busy," she snapped. "And I'm too busy to take a vacation, or - whatever this is. Thanks for the effort, but there's work to do."

He just looked at her. "Sit down," he said, and the tone of his voice changed. It was softer now, lower. "Eat something. Please. Your work is important, but it won't help anyone if you're dead, or if you faint every time you perform a resurrection."

As much as she hated to admit it, he was probably right. She hadn't been sleeping well, or eating much - or at all - and it was taking a toll. She got frustrated more quickly, and everything seemed to take longer. She walked over to him and picked up the bag, and the smells that wafted up out of it - Karou had been eating dried meat and rice for months, and this smelled like the best food she could imagine. She took out package after package of food - falafel and couscous and lamb and tagine, more food than she could possibly eat in one sitting, or even three.

"I wasn't sure what you liked," he admitted shyly.

"Then I guess you'll have to eat some of it."

He protested at first, but she could tell he was hungry and it didn't take much convincing - the food smelled heavenly. He sat down across from her, carefully keeping his distance. Their hands brushed when they both reached for a piece of pita, and he pulled his hand back like he'd been scalded. "Sorry," he said quietly.

She cocked her head questioningly. Sorry he'd touched her? She couldn't blame him. She had made it crystal clear that she blamed him for Loramendi, for Brimstone, for the thousands of chimaera who lay in the great cathedral beneath the city. She had told him, with every word and look and action, that she loathed him, loathed his touch - of course he would pull away.

They shared their food in silence, but every time she looked up his eyes were on her, careful, watching. Karou realized she hadn't looked in a mirror in a very long time. How bad did she look, that he stared at her so intently?

"You're not going to let me leave tonight, are you?" she asked as they packed away the leftover food in boxes. 

He shrugged. "I don't really think I could stop you. But I wish you would stay here, at least for the night. Nothing is going to happen if you're gone for one night. Zuzana told me to tell you that she paid for this room herself, and she would take it very personally if you didn't use it."

At that, Karou actually laughed, and his eyes brightened to hear it. "I don't want to face her wrath," she said.

"I wouldn't risk it," he said solemnly.

"In that case, I'm going back to sleep."

Akiva nodded. "I'll go. I didn't mean to bother you - I just wanted to make sure you were all right, and had something to eat."

"Back to Eretz?"

He looked at her curiously. "Yes. I assume you know the way back, when you're ready."

"Of course." Karou bit her lip. "But - would you stay?"

For a long, long time, he just stared at her.

"You don't have to," she said in a rush, unable to wait out his silence. "I just - I'm used to having people around when I sleep. On guard, I guess. You don't have to stand guard, of course you have things to do - I'm sorry," she finished lamely. "I shouldn't have asked."

Akiva shook his head. "I'll stay."

...

Of course he hadn't been able to speak. He had felt terribly guilty about bringing her across the threshold while she slept; guiltier still about sitting in the room where she slept, tossing and turning. He wanted to get food for her, but that wasn't the real reason he left - he didn't want to face her fury when she woke to find him sitting in her room, watching her like they were still lovers. Like they weren't enemies.

So for her to ask him to stay - it was unimaginable, and it felt like a piece of the forgiveness he knew he could never earn.

Karou moved around him in silence. He heard the shower running in the bathroom for a long time, and above the running water he heard what sounded like crying, but by the time she came out her eyes were clear. While he was out picking up food, he had also gotten her another set of clothes - "I know you love her, but she smells terrible," Zuzana had told him - which she put on in the bathroom before she climbed into bed. Akiva stood awkwardly in a corner, watching her and trying desperately not to watch her.

"If you're not tired, you could watch TV," she suggested, flicking off the lights. 

He just stared at her, and she quickly amended her suggestion. "It's the box in the corner. If you turn it on, there are shows on - I guess they'll all be in languages you don't speak, but you can usually figure out what's going on anyway."

Even after that explanation, he didn't really understand, so he assured her that he would try to sleep, too. He didn't mention that he was just as short on sleep as she was.

"Okay," she said, pulling the blankets up to her shoulders and turning her back to him. Her voice was soft, hesitant. "Good night."

"Good night," Akiva said, sinking back into the armchair. He stayed awake for a long time, waiting for her breathing to even out before he allowed himself to sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

He awoke in the middle of the night to a scream from the other side of the room. 

A scream from the other side of the room. _Karou_. In an instant Akiva was on his feet and next to her, the room lit only by the flickering orange light of his wings. "What's wrong?"

Karou was sitting straight up in her bed, shaking violently and clutching at the blanket. She didn't say anything, just shook her head and stared straight ahead. Her breathing was heavy and quick, and after a moment she buried her face in the blankets. It didn't do much to disguise the sound of her crying.

"Karou," he said uncertainly. Carefully, slowly, he knelt down next to the bed and put his hand on her shoulder. She froze, but then - he would never have expected it - she leaned into him, resting her forehead on his chest. Akiva brought his arms around her, the bare skin of her back warm and smooth against his fingertips. He could smell her hair, smooth as silk and blue as the sky, and every heartbeat sounded in his ears and echoed in his chest until his heartbeat matched hers exactly, beat for beat.

For so many months this was all he had wanted - just this, just a chance to hold her one more time. He remembered that afternoon in Marrakech, before they had broken the wishbone, before she had known - the way her body rose up to meet his, the way they fit so perfectly together, like they had been made that way. Her lips, soft and warm and full.

And now, to get to touch her one more time, to offer her whatever comfort he could before it all came crashing down. It was more than he could have asked for. He didn't move an inch, afraid that when she thought about what was happening, she would move away.

...

When he touched her shoulder, the only thing she felt was relief. His fingertips were feather light on her bare skin, but she could feel the heat of him, that familiar warmth that she missed desperately every time he walked away.

She turned to rest her head on his chest and he pulled her close against him. She felt his arms close tight around her, and then, moments later, his wings. Hot as the sun and soft as down, and wrapped in his arms and his wings, for just a few minutes, the world was only warmth and comfort and candlelight. In that moment, she would have given anything to stay - to make their own world here, to leave all the death and destruction behind, let other people fight for her. She was done, and now all she wanted was one last betrayal. Just this: staying wrapped in the arms of her people's great enemy.

He must have felt her flinch, because he loosened his arms and pulled back to look at her. She turned her face away, unwilling to meet his eyes, unwilling to see what burned in their depths.

"I can't ever forgive you," she said quietly.

"I know." He let her go completely now, sitting back on his heels, hands on his knees. As soon as he moved away she felt bereft, and she hated herself for it.

Karou swallowed hard. She forced herself to look at him. "You said you would always love me." She was sorry to say it, and pain showed itself on his face for a brief moment, but then he nodded.

"I meant it." Now he reached out to her again without thinking, just instinct and whatever force it was that made pulling away from each other feel like protesting gravity, and took her hands in his again. Fingers entwined. All the chimaera wore those fingerless gloves now, as a show of good faith, and Karou was no different. Even though every time she put them on she remembered the hard lines of his chest beneath her fingertips.

"We're enemies," she said, and she hated the way it sounded but it didn't mean it wasn't true. Whatever else happened, they could never be anything else. There was too much blood on their hands. Too much they had lost because of each other. 

Still.

"Akiva," she said, and his name sounded like a prayer on her lips. There was so much hope in his eyes, no matter what she said. So much hope and so much love, and Karou didn't know the difference anymore, anyway, after so many months without either one. "I just need..."

She stopped again, uncertain, but she surged ahead anyway, because the only way to say it was to say it. "I just need to be touched by someone who loves me," Karou said, and her voice cracked in the middle and she hated that weakness, but she was so, so afraid and so, so tired, and she had never managed to _be that cat_ even in the best circumstances. "I'm so sorry," she said, and the tears came again, unbidden. "I'm so, so sorry." Karou pressed her palms against her eyes like she could force the tears back in. She wasn't even sure what she was sorry for anymore - sorry for loving him the first time, for getting caught, for building monsters that murdered children, for loving him still - the list got longer all the time.

But there were his arms again, wrapping her up tight like safety wasn't just an illusion, like he could protect her from any of this. For the first time in months she felt warm enough.

Karou pulled back just enough to press her forehead to his, eyes closed. Their breaths, shaky and quick, settled into a matching rhythm while his fingers traced circles on her back.

Without thinking, she closed the distance between them, gently pressing her lips to his. She wondered if he would pull away, tell her to stop, but maybe he'd wanted this just as badly as she had, because he kissed her back, pulled her closer. His lips were soft and urgent against hers, hands in her hair and a low groan stifled somewhere deep in his throat.

It was wrong and it could never last, but she needed him so badly.

He rose up on his knees and cradled her face in his hands, kissing her lips, her nose, her closed eyelids. She tasted salt on her lips, from his tears or her own, but all she wanted was for him not to stop.

Gently she pulled him back onto the bed to lie next to her, still wrapped around each other, touching from their shoulders to their feet. Every breath was full of him. All she could do was touch him. She slipped her hands beneath the hem of his shirt and helped him pull it over his head and his wings, glowing bright in the darkness so that everything looked lit by firelight.

"Karou," he whispered, and when she ran her fingertips down his chest his whole body tensed, arched toward her, and she knew that he wouldn't stop unless she told him to stop.

She was not going to tell him to stop.


	3. Chapter 3

It was still dark when Karou woke up to warmth and the dim, flickering glow of wings. She closed her eyes, pulling his arms even more tightly around her. Skin against skin, she felt the feather-light touch of his lips against her hair. She wanted to regret it.

She wanted to, but she couldn't quite manage it: not when he was actually here, hands and lips and strong heartbeat. Not when she felt safe for the first time in months.

But that wasn't really a way to live. All of the things she would have to forget or at least ignore: the lines on his fingers, the marks on her palms. A long time ago she had thought she could kiss those differences away, but she knew better now.

He stirred in his sleep, his fingertips trailing over her hips, up her side. His wings settled over her, his body curved around hers like they were formed around each other.

Being with him made her conscious of the difference in her bodies, more acutely than she had felt before. Lying next to him, she noticed how much shorter she was in her human body, and how much more muscular, though just as slender. Lately when she looked in mirrors she had to remind herself who she was. One more thing to be grateful about in the Kirin caves: no mirrors. There had been once, of course, but they had all been shattered when the angels attacked.

When the angels attacked, and murdered her entire family, and destroyed her tribe.

Sometimes, in flashes, she understood exactly why the other chimaera despised her.

"Karou." He exhaled the name next to her ear, and it took her a moment to remember that it was hers. This happened more and more frequently lately. Especially now that some of the chimaera had begun to accept her, she found herself identifying more and more with her chimaera self, with her old name. Ziri - Thiago, she reminded herself - had even slipped once, called her Madrigal, and her head had turned in an instant. She didn't even have to think about it.

She didn't want to think of Ziri. What he would think of her here, like this.

Being with Akiva meant hating herself: thinking constantly about everything he had done, everything he had done that she had allowed by saving him all those years ago. Being without him meant living with a constant ache that threatened to consume her, that same emptiness of her younger years writ large and threatening to expand beyond what she could contain.

Sitting across the caves from him these past few weeks had felt like dying. Having him so close but knowing she could never have him - the hollow places inside her grew so large that she thought she would forget the rest of herself. Her fingertips burned to touch him.

She turned in his arms, and at her movement he finally woke up, eyelids fluttering open, blinking in the gray dawn light that was just beginning to filter in through the windows. When his eyes opened fully, she watched the expression in them change: from surprise to wonder to the same deep contentedness she remembered from their time in the temple. "Hello," he said, his voice husky with sleep. She wondered what he had dreamed about.

"Hello," she whispered. It felt like any too-loud noise would break a spell she had cast, sending them back home to terror and sadness. She liked it here, wrapped in the warm cocoon of blankets and sunlight and his arms and his wings. Maybe she could stay.

With his fingertips he traced the outline of her eyebrow, tracing down to her cheekbone, her jaw, looking at her so intently. "Karou," he said, and his voice was clearer now but not any lighter. "I need to tell you something."

Her stomach clenched. Nothing good ever started that way.

He was hesitant, his fingers running through her hair now, like he was trying to keep himself calm - or to keep her calm. "Karou, back in Prague - when I came to find you in Marrakech."

No, she did not want to hear this. That day had been one of the worst days of her life, rivaling only the days preceding her own execution. Every time she thought about that afternoon it felt the same, like a punch to the gut, sucking all of the air out of her. For one brief, beautiful moment, everything had been perfect: she had Akiva, she had her old life and her new life, she was ready to go back to Eretz and finish what he had started - when he had revealed that he already had, destroying everything she loved in the process.

But he didn't stop. "I had the wishbone. I brought it to Marrakech, and the whole time - Karou, I thought about just dropping it. I spent hours flying over the ocean, and it was all I could think about. I could say it was an accident, or I could find another wishbone somewhere, pretend it was yours. I thought of every possible way to avoid your breaking the wishbone."

Whatever she had expected, it wasn't this. "Why?" she asked, suddenly cold.

"I thought that if you never knew, then you would never go back to Eretz. I thought I could stay with you, here, become part of your life here. We could be together, and you would never have to know any of it. You would never have to know what I did." He must have sensed the anger growing in her, because when he continued, his voice was lower, pleading. "Your world, Karou - this world. I had never seen anything like it. And you. Somehow you were returned to me, beautiful and whole in a world that was beautiful and whole, and I let myself think that it was for me. That some force of fate had decided I had suffered enough, and given me everything I had ever wanted - more than I had known I wanted."

"You would have stolen my life from me," she said, and she was surprised by how steady her voice sounded, how entirely calm. "My past. My family."

He didn't deny it. "I couldn't bring myself to do it. I had already done everything possible to hurt you. I had already taken so much from you, even if you didn't know it yet. I couldn't take this from you too." He hesitated. One beat, two. "And I wanted you to know me," he admitted. "I knew that as soon as you found out, you would be gone, and I would never see you again. I just wanted to see you remember me. Just once."

"Why are you telling me this?" she asked.

"I want you to know what I am," he said. It sounded so simple when he said it like that, but Karou knew it was anything but. "I don't want to lie to you anymore."

Karou closed her eyes. She didn't want to lie anymore, either. She had done enough of it for both her lifetimes. "I wish you had done it," she said, her voice barely audible. In her arms he stiffened, his hands tensing at the small of her back.

"You don't mean that."

"Maybe not." She felt tears burning at the corners of her eyes again and she tried to push them back. She didn't want to cry anymore. Never in either of her lives had she been that kind of girl. "But what good did it do me? My life wasn't perfect but I was happy, mostly. And when I met you I felt like maybe it could be perfect. And now...Akiva, before, in the casbah...things were really bad. Really, really bad. And it's a little better now, but now that I know, I can't ever go back to my old life. Now I'm stuck here, in a world that I can't fix and where everything has fallen apart and it's my fault." She sighed. "In Prague, my biggest problem was a boyfriend that slept with other girls."

He furrowed his brow, trying to remember. "The boy on the bridge," he said, suddenly picturing the man very clearly. A few inches shorter than him, blonde. "The one who grabbed you."

"That's the one," she agreed. She laughed a little. "That's what used to break my heart. Funny."

"What breaks your heart now?" His voice was so quiet that she wasn't sure she had heard him at all.

"Everything." And she meant it.


	4. Chapter 4

He knew it was ridiculous, but he hated the idea. That there had been someone else's hands on her, touching her; that another man's lips had known her body as well as he longed to. Still, he couldn't bring himself to ask about it. He didn't want to know.

And Thiago. He had dreamed of it again, just tonight: that haunted, terrified look in her eyes, something he had never seen on her face or on Madrigal's, even when she faced her execution. The scratches, her torn earlobe, the bruises on her ams that were exactly the size and shape of the Wolf's fingers. Akiva had never asked. It wasn't his place. He had only watched, and worried. When it seemed clear that she and Thiago were working together, he had tried to forget what he'd seen.

It still chased him at night, though. In the caves with their eerie songs, his nightmares were more vivid than ever. Voices and faces blurred together, a constant replay of everything he had lost and exactly how he had lost it, mixed with terrible premonitions. Madrigal's execution. Hazael lying on the floor in the casbah. Karou's face when she realized what had happened to Brimstone. His mother, torn from him. Karou's name on the thurible. His brother and sister attacking him on the bridge. Dead angels, dead chimaera. His life was a constant, steady stream of death.

Which was, of course, the point.

Looking at Karou, back here in her magical, beautiful world, he remembered it again. What Brimstone had told him, a truth he had always known but had forgotten in the long, dark years after Madrigal's death. _Death is your master, or life is_.

Karou, with her bright eyes, her sparkling laugh, her smile like sunlight. He wasn't only fighting for her, but she was enough. She deserved better than the life on offer in Eretz.

As he had a thousand times before, he imagined a life for them in another world, a better world. The world they had dreamed of creating. He thought of her friends, wrapped around each other in Karou's tiny apartment. Waking to work - to work as artists, not soldiers, making things instead of destroying them - and then to eat and love and fall asleep again in each other's arms. Waking to Karou's smile every morning and combing the tangles from her blue, blue hair with his fingers. Those nights in the temple were hazy in his memory, but he could imagine their future like it was a real thing.

What had he thought, seeking her out at the Warlord's ball? He hadn't really believed she would go with him, but then, he could never have imagined the electricity between them. He had never been one to give in to animal urges - that had been trained out of him - but her skin and the way she looked at him had turned him into someone new. A man instead of a soldier. He remembered the relief he had felt when he entered her, relief he had felt as strongly as pleasure, like there had been something building inside him that could only be released by making love to her.

His kind were not sentimental, and he had never thought much of the act itself. Certainly the Misbegotten were not to engage in it, though of course most of them did, secretly. But it was always more about release, about a few brief moments free from pain, than about anything else.

With Karou, it was everything. Her small, strong hands, the curve of her body, the long, smooth muscles of her legs and arms. He'd ached for her from the first moment he saw her, the same sweet, soft ache he'd felt for Madrigal and thought he would never feel again.

And here they were.

He had hardly slept in the night for fear that he would wake to find her gone, or worse, to find that it had never happened at all, that his subconscious had just found a brand new way to torture him. Every time he half-woke to find her still there, breathing soft and steady in his arms, it felt like a miracle.

They had shared misery so often that it was magic to share happiness, or anything close to it.

"Tell me," she said, and he looked at her, quizzical. "Tell me what it would have been like. If you’d done it."

Akiva took a deep breath, and began. "First, we had to find a bigger flat." She giggled and warmth rose up in him, responding to the ringing of her laughter. Something he never thought he would hear again. "We painted the walls the same blue as your hair and hung your wings on the walls, to match mine. You had to teach me to cook, because I'd never done it."

"Neither have I," Karou interrupted. "I lived off pastries, remember?"

He smiled into her hair. "Then we lived off pastries until we figured out how to cook. Together. In the morning we would go out to buy breakfast and fly up over the rooftops to watch the sunrise, and in the evenings we sat together to watch it set. During the day..." He hesitated. "What do people do all day there?"

Karou shrugged. "They have jobs. They go to work. Maybe they make things or help people or answer phones."

"What would you have done?"

She sat up on one elbow to look at him. "I was in school to be an artist. I don't know if that would have been a real job, but that was all I knew how to do. Other than fight seraphim and build monster bodies."

"So your job would have been making beautiful things?" he asked. She nodded. "I like that. What about me?"

"We wouldn't have to work at all if we didn't want to," she said. A pause. "Brimstone...he left me a lot of money. A lot. I would never have had to do anything I didn't want to."

_But you still came back to Eretz_ , he thought. Out loud, though, he just told her he was sorry. For the hundredth time, and if he said it a million times it still wouldn't be enough.

"Don't," she said. "Keep going? Please?"

Of course, he obliged. "Then we would work during the day. You would draw and paint. I would clean your paintbrushes for you." That giggle again. It made her sound so human, so young. It broke his heart, a little bit. "We stayed up late at night, reading to each other and telling each other everything we had seen in the world that day." His voice dropped. "We made love every night, and woke up next to each other every morning. Eventually we had children, and they were all beautiful, but none of them had blue hair." She sighed against his chest.

"I hope you married me before you got me pregnant," she said, her voice light, teasing.

He smiled. "I think in this version we were married from the beginning."

"On Earth people don't really get married at seventeen," she said. "At least not in Europe, where I live. Where I lived. I don't even think I would be allowed to get married - there's no guardian to agree to it."

"Seventeen?" he echoed. He hadn't given it much thought, really. When they had first met, all he had cared about was her connection to Brimstone, the revenant marks on her hands, and the line of her neck. Later, when he knew who she really was, he thought of her as both Karou and Madrigal. Never in all that time had he thought about her being seventeen. It sounded so very young, even in Eretz, where babies were born soldiers.

"Thirty five, if I get credit for my other life," she said, the corner of her mouth turning up. "As I think I should."

Akiva looked at her. He had no right to ask her this question, he knew that, but he still wanted to know. It seemed important that he know. "Karou," he said, hesitant. "Did he - did Brimstone want you to stay on Earth? Is that why he raised you here, as a human?"

Karou turned away from him, and he felt it like a slap. He couldn't blame her, though. "I don't know," she said, and at the anguish in her voice he regretted having asked at all. "He said something to me once, a few weeks before - a few weeks before. That I was a butterfly and one day I would fly away and leave them all behind, and that he wanted me to." She swallowed hard and continued. "But he never trained anyone else, and he left Issa and Yasri for me to find, so he must have meant for me to take over when - when he died. He must have."

Akiva stroked her hair. "Maybe he wanted you to go back to finish what we started," he said quietly. "You said he was like us. That he wanted the same things we did."

"They don't hate you," she said suddenly. "Issa and Yasri. They loved Brimstone. They worked with him for decades, and they stayed with him almost until the end. They know exactly what you did, and they don't hate you."

His heart lifted to hear it - had they told her this? Why? Had she asked? "There's a lot of room between not-hate and love," he said quietly.

"Not enough."

God, he would have given everything to go back to that moment and change what happened. He would give anything to erase the pain from her face and the knowledge that he had put it there.

"Before they killed me, Brimstone came to me. He told me that I didn't have to be ashamed. That i hadn't been wrong for loving you."

Akiva closed his eyes. This was the man he had killed. "You must think I'm a monster."

"War makes monsters of all of us," she said. "I've killed. I have done evil. I've cause pain."

"Not like I have," he said, the image of his blackened knuckles flashing behind his eyes.

"No," she agreed. "Not like you have."

But then she leaned in, pressing her chest against his and kissing him softly, like nothing had changed.

"So what happens when we go back?" she asked when they pulled apart, her words little puffs of air against his jawline. He shivered.

"What do you want?" he asked, as though it mattered. In truth, they had very little control over what happened. The best they could hope for was that their joint absence would go unnoticed, brief as it had been. The chimaera and the Misbegotten were coming around to each other, in degrees, but he knew that their fragile alliance would be shattered in an instant if anyone found out that he and Karou were...together.

"Not to be so alone," Karou whispered, and she didn't look up at him. "I'm so, so lonely. I can't stand it. And I want-" She closed her eyes tight, brought her palms up to press against her eyelids, and she was so beautiful in that moment. "We can't be together, but I can't go back to how it was before."

He nuzzled her neck, let his fingertips trail down the length of her, following the spark. "Then we'll keep it secret."

"Because that worked out so well last time."

Akiva grinned in spite of himself. "At least it can't go much worse." And for the first time, he believed it.


End file.
